Police question how 11-month-old boy ended up in the woods

ATLANTA - An Atlanta woman is being praised for locating a missing 11-month-old boy.

Investigators said Durante Cochran vanished from a home in the 1400 block of Beecher Street in southwest Atlanta late Wednesday night and wasn't located until Thursday morning.

Durante, who was staying with relatives, went to sleep on a sofa around 9 p.m. Two hours later, when a family member checked on him, he was gone and the front door was open. Police were investigating as a possible kidnapping and searched the neighborhood for hours.

Just before 9 a.m., neighbor Valerie Victom found the baby in a wooded area about one block away from the home he disappeared from. She said "God made it happen."

"He reached for me like I was his mama. I said, 'I got you baby.' I just snatched him up and brought him home to clean him up, but he was fine," Victom told FOX 5.

Victom said police knocked on her door overnight as they searched for the child.

"Me being a mother, I said 'I'm going to find this baby,' and I'm still a nervous wreck," Victom said. "God just puts me in place sometimes for a reason."

The toddler was taken to a nearby hospital to be checked out. Atlanta Police Major Adam Lee told FOX 5 his investigators are not convinced that the little boy was in the woods off Gaston Street all of those hours, especially since that area was checked by police with canines overnight.

It's just highly unlikely that an 11 month old boy could get that far-- we're talking about a block-and-a-half on his own. Plus, all of the people who searched that area were covered in mosquito bites when they came out of the woods. This little boy didn't have a single bite. It just doesn't add up," said Major Lee.